A fresh page, a clean start,
The past’s colors mute.
The calm before the storm,
A sense of agitation
Lingers in the stomach not
Quite yet—
But it’s coming.
It’s coming.
The new year is just another day
So why the expectancy?
It’s become an icon, a symbol,
For white, for fresh,
For a chance to start again
And look forward
Rather than behind.
Pick up the brush, the pen, the ink—
Roll out the parchment, the laptop,
The rumpled napkins in the corners—
And let the vibrancy flow and stain
And leak into every crevice of the world.

The O draws nearer, nearer, nearer—
Consuming, consuming, consuming all—
Swallowing the world, spitting it out,
Redevouring it
Black black gray—
Swirling swirling swirling mess
Time color images thoughts feelings
All consumed, all devoured
By the gaping maw of O
O, O, O
The owl hoots in the night
And the bats beat their leathery wings
Trying to escape the O, O, O
The night, the night—O, the night!
Dark days, dark days
Inside the pit of O—
Days dark as night, dark as the heart
That has shriveled up, withered,
Gray veins pumping sludgy shadows
Through an empty husk,
Around around around in a circle,
No beginning, no end,
No strength to break free of that
O O O

One card up,
One card up,
Marching over the swirling
Abyss, abyss,
Deep down below.
One card up,
One card up,
Higher and higher they stack.
The dying sun
Casts rays from on high.
No strings attached,
Just precariously balanced,
One card up,
One card up,
Waiting, waiting.
Still stands time.
Shadows lengthen,
Shorten—swirl,
****** backwards
And downwards
By Abyss.

I have wings on my heart,
And they let me soar.
True, there are several arrows
Piercing the thin outer skin,
And a few feathers are missing,
But despite all that,
I can still fly.
The joys of others are the wind
That lifts me to new heights.
Two hands wait beneath my heart,
Bolstering it, and being the strength
Needed to carry on.
They’re large and warm,
Full of compassion and healing.
They’re always there and
Never have they failed
To catch my fragile heart
When it wavers and dips.
When I falter, they gently ****
My heart in the right direction:
So up and up I fly,
To the face of my one true Valentine,
To my Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ.

Sometimes when I’m walking through the house,
A face floats up from the shadows, scaring me.
I pause and turn, looking at this other girl.
Who is this girl, this girl I keep seeing?
Who is this girl, this girl who keeps following me?
She seems familiar, somehow, almost as though
I knew her at some point in the past.
I raise a hand to touch her face, her cheek.
The girl does the same to me, reaches up and out—
Both both our hands reach only cold glass.
Is it really only me? Only my cold reflection?
But that’s not what I look like—
That’s not who I am—or perceive myself to be
On the inside, beyond flesh, muscle, and blood.
This person is a stranger to me, and I to her.
So why is her face on me, I in her body?
Why must I live a stranger, when it’s only me inside?

The wound on the beating red
Has lain bare for some time now.
The jagged edges do nothing
To stop the oozing flow of blood.
The pain’s immense—it won’t stop,
Not for all the salves in the world.
But an animal shows up,
A cat, a dog, a mouse, a snake, a turtle—
The species is irrelevant.
The animal approaches in a dream,
Looks the red flesh over,
And gently lays a paw or tail or foot over it.
The edges start to shrink,
New flesh sprouting over the bridging
The two far sides, healing has begun.
The wound will never truly heal;
A puckered pinching of the skin will remain,
But it will be in the shape
Of that paw, foot, hoof, or tail.

Pigments cascade down the canvas,
Coating the blank white with imagination.
Drip, drip, they fall with grace to embrace
The pocked surface beneath their bodies.
They intermingle, form new forms,
Yet continue to go their own ways,
Unaware of the driving force.

The artist stands off to the side,
Watching his creation swirl.
He created a storm, a beautiful storm.
He folds his arms, his face stoic,
For the pigments express his emotions.

A vast plain stands before me,
So large the horizon blends
With its yellow-green grasses.
I’m always walking,
My feet are always moving,
I never take a break.
Sometimes the plain moves
Normally underneath my feet,
But, sometimes, it rushes past,
One step taking me seven leagues;
Sometimes, only two centimeters.
I don’t usually see others
On this vast plain that I’ve come to call my own;
And when I do, it’s usually
Just silhouettes or shadows,
Nothing substantial or solid.
Sound is distorted here, too;
Sometimes low and slow,
Sometimes high and fast—
I can’t usually understand
The vibrations that come from the shadows.
Of course, I can’t understand
The grasses that bend in the wind
Either.
I can’t understand the plain
That moves at different speeds
Either.
All I can do is take one step,
Then another, and another,
Until I finally find out
Where the plain meets the horizon.

Plants
Feed off both the darkness
And the light.
They are planted in darkness,
Grow in darkness,
Survive the darkness.
They reach out through the black
And manipulate it
And thrive on it.
Then they reach the light, they still remain
Partially buried in the earth.
Just as an iceberg
Hides itself under the water,
So, too, do plants
Hide their amazing network
Of sturdy roots
Beneath the soil.
Many look at a plant
And marvel at its wonders
Without a second through
About the maze of life
That supports that
Which lives in light.

I am both the puppet and the puppet master.
I dance to the will of others while subtly controlling them.
I sometimes make myself dance,
The two halves of me controlling and obedient simultaneously.
The shadow that lurks in my shadow—
I am that, too, seeping and oozing over the ground.
The forces in my heart are battling for control—
The shadow and the light are battling.
My heart remains the ****** battlefield,
Littered with dead dreams and riddled with holes.
And all the while the puppet jerks,
Obeying the tug of strings,
And all the while the puppet masker jerks,
Controlling the mass of strings.

The glossy raven-crow perches on the wire,
Its carefully-preened wings glistening
With perfect drops of moisture.
It surveys its domain with coal-black eyes—
Coal-black, but not void, not empty—
Black with all the absorbed knowledge,
The deep black of knowing too much,
The tacit black of the extraterrestrial skies.
The raven-crow omits a sound into the air,
Silent to some, but volumes to others.
The raven-crow spoke directly to the air,
And the air understood the message.
The two share the deeply-seated secret,
So it’s not as much a burden as before.
The sun falls into the embrace
Of the curvature of the Earth.
The raven-crow, having received its cue,
***** its obsidian wings once more,
Sending crystal tears to shatter midflight.

Frozen.
Ba-dump.
Red
And blue.
Ba-dump.
The blue leaks
While the red pools.
Ba-dump.
The red smears
While the blue streaks
Its way through.
Ba-dump.
It’s all purple now.
Ba-dump.
The purple drips
And falls
And tumbles
Through the sky.
Ba-dump.
It plips
On the air
And separates
Into blue
And red.
Ba-dump.
They merge
And flow
And streak
And pool
And are
Ba-dump
Red
And blue.

There's a room full of vases
And each one is different.
Some have cracks,
Others, fractures;
Some have crumbled,
Others, shattered;
Some have different colours
In a patchwork pattern.
Some look whole and well
But only from a distance;
Others' cracks are so fine
Only the vase can tell it's broken.
But each vase is beautiful.
Each vase can be useful,
Be patched up and hold something.
This room full of vases
Appears sad to some,
But it is also
Brimming with life.

Half-forms, half-thoughts,
Rolling, rolling, turning,
Swirling and meshing and churning and fusing,
A whole chaotic jumbled mess

That makes perfect sense to one.

One brave soul amidst the storm,
One strong figure against the tempest,
One resolute leader, unwavering hero,
Can understand the brew.

The others think him mad
For watching the Halfs flash by.
Him, mad? Possibly.
Be he thinks himself sane.
And who can tell him
“Sane” or not?
They see Halfs, he sees Wholes.
They see tumult, he sees languidness.
They see chaos, he sees order.
They see a storm, he sees peace.
So he smiles to himself as they quake;
They do not understand the humour.
The Wholes shared something amusing
With their steadfast Captain,
But the others see Halfs, so the humour was lost.
This is all the more amusing,
And so this sane madman
Laughs and laughs and laughs.

In and out, in and out.
The seagull cries.
Colors blend and wash ashore,
Drifting in from beyond the skies.

In and out, in and out.
Clouds drift lazily o'erhead.
Winds blow soft and harsh,
Touching where no foot has tread.

In and out, in and out.
The sea salt sprays.
Solid shapes are distorted,
Becoming lost in the haze.

In and out, in and out.
The waves lap the shore.
The sea foam leaps up and o'er,
Dissipating with a silent roar.

In and out, in and out.
The seagulls cry.
In and out, in and out,
The sea will never die.

I look to the horizon with a spyglass,
Trying to discern what’s there.
A small child waits beside me,
And I clutch her hand;
She grips my hand in return
While clinging to the fabric I wear.
We have never been apart in all our years,
Ever since we first met.
I glance at her every now and then,
Look her full in the face,
See the wrinkles that line her eyes
And the pale complexion she shows.
Every so often we converse;
Her voice is still and quiet.
I have to strain to hear her words,
But she has to hear mine as well.
We talk about the days gone by,
The ones she’s living now
While to me they are events of the past.
And once our conversation is over,
I return the spyglass to my eye
And stare beyond the horizon.
I wonder what it’s like over there,
What lies in wait for me.
I imagine myself among those shores,
Wriggling my toes in the sand.
But the time has not yet come,
And I still have a child to care for.
I won’t ever let this child go,
And she knows this,
And adheres herself to my side.
I have been told to let her go,
To leave her with those who will care for her
In ways I never can.
To look around me instead.
But she looks at me with those wide eyes
And my heart is swayed.
So she stays with me on my journey
To beyond the merging of above and below.
And someday, someyear, the horizon
Will come to me, and I to it,
And at last I will know
What was waiting for me.

When the gold burns low,
And the tongues lick no more,
The shadows come out to play.
They leap and twist, hover and fall.
They bloom and they wither;
They chase each other
Around the dying lights.
They refuse to die, the shadows of light.
Yet die they must,
Along with their snaking friends,
And at last they are born away
By the wispy hands of the wind.

The black waters lap gently
At the shore of an obsidian beach.
I stand with my feet
Just submerged under the water,
My nails shining with kuro polish.
A shinigami waits beside me,
Its hands clasped behind its back
And its gaze fixed unblinkingly
At the distant, curved horizon.
Friends, enemies—I do not know yet:
All I know so far
Is that we’ve been standing here, together,
For quite some time,
And that every so often,
One of us will reach out
And clasp the other’s hand.

Sidestep, sidestep,
Twist and lunge.
Day is coming;
Night is done.
Words elusive
Slip though time,
Never joining
To form a line.
Grasses wither,
Flowers bloom;
Sun shines brightly
Amidst the gloom.
Deepest blackness,
Force of night;
Nothing hidden
From its sight.

The clock in my room is silent.
It’s only in my head—my head—
That I hear the snick of time passing.
Snick snick snick—
It mocks me, taunts me,
Pulls me deeper into the nightmare.
Time has become my enemy—
I cannot rewind,
I cannot pause,
I cannot fastforward.
I want to return to Then,
Skip the Now—
Pausing would be horrid—
And not even glimpse the Soon.
But snick snick snick goes my clock—
Snick snick snick goes my mind.
The window floats before my eyes
And I am forced to look through it
And witness the Soon
That I’d rather avoid.
Soon Soon Soon—
Oh how it looms!
Rivaled only by Now
While Then cowers in the corner.
I wish to join it.
Snick flinch snick flinch snick flinch.
Snick snick snick
Snick snick SNICK
SNICK snick SNICK
SNICK SNICK SNICK
SNICK
SNICK
SNICK

Silence.

Someone will love you the way you deserve to be loved.
Someone will see your rough hands and love that you have the tenacity and determination to overcome everything you've faced.
Someone will love you enough to ***** their own hands and help you carry your burdens and hardships.
Someone will love you enough to see that you have monsters but not press you to share them until you're ready,
And then they will love them as they love you,
Or they will help you vanquish them.
Someone will love you and all your quirks.
Someone will look at you and see a strong man or woman who can overcome anything he or she sets his or her mind to.
Someone will love your intellect and look upon you with the awe you deserve.
Someone will love your laugh and the way it lights you up from the inside
And they will take it upon themselves to help you laugh,
Even if they have to wait a bit because it's difficult for you.
Someone will love you night after night after night,
And they will love you enough to wait.
Someone will hold your hand even when it's sweaty and it's okay because theirs are sweaty too.
Someone will love your face even when it’s completely natural.
Someone will accept your body as your body, no matter its fitness level or smell.
Someone will understand that your stomach growls because you're hungry and that's only human.
Someone will be concerned whenever you cough or sneeze.
Someone will be patient for you and reassure you over and over again about the insecurities you harbour in your heart.
Someone will place a calming hand on your knee when it's bouncing, and remove it if it makes you uncomfortable.
Someone will find it touching that you remember everything you say to each other.
Someone will protect you when you're scared and understand when to encourage you and when to let you do what you want at the pace you want.
Someone will look forward to gazing into your eyes and seeing all the emotions that lurk there,
But they will know when not to say anything.
Someone will love the ink or music notes or movement leaking from your fingers because that is your soul coming out and it's beautiful.
You are beautiful.
Someone will love your sense of humour and look forward to your jokes.
Someone will love your teeth because they're yours,
And your eyes because of the secrets they hold within.
Someone will be able to tell when you're forcing a smile on your face and wait patiently for the real ones.
Someone won't care about how fast or slow you talk because it's still your voice.
Someone will love your lips and anticipate the time they can next kiss them.
Someone will see you for you and love you regardless.
Someone will wait for you to outwardly show your emotions,
Even if it's only with them.
Someone will love you, someday.

Free-floating, gliding around,
No up, no down, no left or right.
A big jumbled mess
That makes perfect sense.
Rocketing at high velocity,
Colliding and sending sparks
Flying in all directions.
The sparks float aimlessly
As the objects that created them.
They leave a sparkling trail
Of stars in their wake.
Trace it back to the origin.
Recreate the collision.
Witness for yourself
The sparks as they fly.
Maybe one day you, too,
Can be part
Of that glorious bang.

There are so many stories swirling around me,
So many twisting threads of Life.
All I have to do is reach out in front of me,
And grab one of the swirling scrolls,
And spread it out on the table before me.
Then, I can read it, step-by-step;
Page-by-page the truth makes itself known;
Word-by-word, a brand new color is revealed.
My Light may dim; it may brighten—
Regardless, it’s changed forever,
And it changes yet again
When I pull another manuscript
From the plethora of stories that dance.

Clinging to the corner,
The ceiling,
The unused room upstairs,
The dusty cellar basement;
Lurking in the shadows,
Cringing from the light.
Retreating for now
But returning later,
Stronger, faster,
Harder to ignore.
Long, gangly, sickly;
Short, stocky, powerful;
Tiny, flitting, wispy;
Huge, full, pervasive.
Cunning, plotting, patient.
Always there,
Always watching,
Always waiting.

It’s hard to move forward in life
When Past still has its razors lodged in your flesh.
It’s hard to look to the past for help
When Future’s clouding your vision.
It’s hard to live in the present
When Past and Future are using your mind
As a rope in a game of Tug-of-War.

Who am I?
I am the Imposter.
I creep inside your body when you’re not looking
And I snip your soul from your flesh
But I don’t let it leave,
Oh, no.
No, no.
I keep it tethered,
Feed off it,
Absorb its very essence—
Absorb your very essence.
And I act in its place.
I change you slowly at first—
An odd action here and there
That you feel is wrong,
That you feel is not you,
Because your tethered soul knows it’s not you
Doing those odd things.
But you think it is you doing those things,
Because who else could it be?
And so I change you,
Bit by bit,
Until you finally open your eyes and realise
Who you are outside
Does not match who you are inside.
Who you are outside,
The one doing these things,
Fits in with the others,
But who you are inside
Is several years younger.
And slowly that gap widens
Until you can’t do anything about it,
Because by then
I’ve made a nice little nest in your flesh
And you don’t even remember who you are.
You can only sit there,
Trapped within your own mind,
Wondering where it all went wrong.

Dogs roam the streets,
Scraping out a meager living
From the scraps thrown out of windows.
There is a house
In the middle of all the others.
In this house
Lives a man,
A man who watches the dogs,
Tosses them food
So that they would not starve.
At times he approaches a dog,
Talks gently and soothingly—
Though he can rebuke them harshly,
But only if need be—
And he will invite the dog into his home,
But the dog has the final say.
The dogs decide whether to follow
And even when to leave.
But the man is patient.
He will wait as long as necessary.
At times he will change his tactics
And send some of his dogs out
To mingle with the wild ones.
His dogs proudly wear the collars he gave them.
They befriend the wild dogs,
Sometimes ostentatiously flashing the collar,
Sometimes just wearing it
Until another dog shows interest.
At night they return to the man’s house,
Curl up by his fire,
Full from his bread and wine.
And sometimes, a wild dog
Will follow one of the man’s dogs home.
There are dogs who leave the house
And never return.
There are dogs who fashion a collar
Similar to the ones the man makes
And they wear it
And say they are of the man’s home,
But they are no more
Than the wild dogs among whom they live.
However, the man is patient.
He forgives them.
He still tosses them food,
Still heals them,
Still speaks gently,
Still awaits the day
When the join him in his home.

The river runs fast and swift,
Churning and boiling and frothing,
Foaming at the mouth like a rabid animal.
But inside my study, I am unaffected.
I look up as it batters at my door.
The hourglass on my desk
Has been upset once more.
It’s lying on its side, the sand askew.
I stand to fix it but my head whirls—
Must not have eaten enough,
Or must not have slept enough,
Or must not have calmed enough.
The reason matters not,
And it keeps me not from my task.
I set the hourglass back on its feet
And sink back into the cushioned chair,
Curling up once more with the tales of old.
I’ve lost track of time now—
The hourglass can only lie to me now—
And I have that river to thank.
Blasted thing.

The silence is calling.
The silence is beckoning.
I can hear it.
I can feel it.
My lids grow heavy
And my head nods against my chest
In time with my slowed heartbeat.
The silence is around me.
The silence is everywhere.
I embrace it as it embraces me.
Silence, silence, silence,
It calls.
*Come, sleep.
Fight the foes of your world
And vanquish them in your sleep,
For when you sleep,
The troubles will come,
But you can fight them,
Defeat them, overcome them.
Come, and be the hero you never dreamed you could be.

The tree is bent.
It stands tall,
But it’s bent.
Water drips from its barren branches,
Hot, stinging droplets skewed by gravity,
A deep, rich, sapphire blue.
Drip, drip, fall the droplets,
Falling from an unknown tree.
Below waits an invisible basin,
A basin that provides optical illusions,
Illusions of being filled
Even though the droplets quickly drain.
Yet still the tree stands,
Shedding these sapphires,
Trying to remain tall in the storm.

The tears streak down your cheeks,
And the snot leaks out your nose,
But you’re still beautiful.
There’s a certain beauty that radiates
From your eyes and from your face,
From your heart and from your soul,
A silent strength that you have trouble seeing—
Even with a special mirror.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,
And I behold yours.

When two things
Pull equally in opposite directions,
The object doesn't move.
When Red battles Blue,
Nothing gets done.
Red says one thing,
But Blue says another.
Only Blue
Can see both Black and White;
Red only senses them.
Both are Purple,
So which is correct?
Red wants to rush ahead;
Blue wishes to hold back and wait.
What will happen?
Who will win?

There's Green,
Standing off to the side.
It's lost its voice;
Blue and Red
Have stopped listening long ago.
The words have stopped coming
From Green.

If life is a tunnel,
It’s long and narrow.
It’s a maze of networks
In the bowels of the Earth.
Sometimes the tunnels
Are used for sewers instead
And you wind up slogging through muck.
At other times,
The tunnels are high and dry
And everything seems good.
Since the tunnels meld together
Into a near-endless labyrinth,
One can make many choices
And will dictate where one ends up.
The end result?
The Light at the end—
The opening to the surface world—
Or be trapped forever,
Wandering the heated, boiling center
With your life picked at
By nightmares.

War—
War is ugly.
The cries of the fighters
Meet the cries of the anguished.
(How easily the two intermingle.)
Life bleeds out upon the ground—
Or in the air—
To be lapped up by the animals
And absorbed by the plants.
The reds of rage
Meets the reds of wounds—
And the wounds weep
As the heart weeps
And the heart weeps
As the earth weeps.
War destroys so much more
Than what is before the hunters.
War sends echoes
Reverberating through the ages.
When will everyone hear these echoes
And put a stop to the cycle?

They think it so big,
So beautiful, so full of promise.
They think it bright and shining,
Full of some inner light.
But they don’t see it.
There’s a lens right in front of their eyes,
Magnifying it beyond normal limits.
It’s not big, not beautiful,
Not as full of promise.
It’s not bright or shining,
It has no inner light.
It’s just plain.
They get so confused when it fails
To satisfy their demands.
And it shrinks from their confusion.
It doesn’t want to confuse
Or disappoint or anger.
It just wants to be seen
For what it is, without a lens.

We live in a world of wires,
Of snakes and electrical impulses.
We live in a world that’s both
Interconnected and ignorant.
We live in a world that has been skewed
By the minds of mortal men.
We live in a world of color,
Yet people cling to black and white.
We live in a world bursting with promise—
Yet we look across at each other
And down at what lies below
And ignore the life that sparks around
In lieu of the ghostly imitations
That streak through the snakes.

You contemplate the past,
Revel in the present,
Envision the future.
Hope is in your steps.

Wounds do not disappear,
But slowly, over time,
They are soothed,
And they are healed.

You make a beautiful Venn Diagram,
Where the overlapping section
Is about equal
With your separate sections.

Love is love,
And once you’ve found it,
You know.

The whispers in the corners of the classroom
Rise up like the quiet hissing of serpents,
Swirling around in verisimilitudinous eddies,
Less quiet, less quiet, less quiet, less quiet,
Whispers becoming cacophonous.
The silence screams for quiet;
The silence screams for itself.
But it clings to the forgotten corners of the classroom.

All they see is a white rose,
White and unblemished.
To them, the thorns are dulled
And hardly even there.
They poke and **** it,
Hoping or seeking to find
At least some sort of gray
Among its pure white petals—
And they find nothing.
So they sit back contentedly,
Satisfied to watch this white rose
Bloom to its full extent.

But they do not see.

For inside this rose of snow
Is a bud of blood.
The inside of this blood bud
Is black and rotting,
Withering and dying.
The taint has begun to work its way
Through the needle-thin veins
And is carrying its gray
To the tips of the petals.

And still they see nothing.
Still they see only unblemished white.

If you believe you are worthless,
You are wrong.
Ask your friends and family—
Ask the ones around you.
They’ll be able to tell you
At least a little
Of how you’ve influenced them.
Maybe talking to you
Brightens their day.
Maybe they come to you
For advice.
Maybe you provide
That critical listening ear.
Maybe your smile
Puts them at ease.
Maybe you have brilliant ideas
That remind them to discard The Box.
I speak of all these Maybes,
But I leave it up to you
To find out exactly how
You’re needed
You’re wanted
You’re loved
You have worth.
Write them down.
Look at them again and again
When you’re hovering in the Void.
Maybe it won’t bring you out,
But maybe it’ll keep you
From falling further.

It's a delicate dance that writers perform.
We bow to our insanity and take hold of its hand.
One, two, three; one, two three; one, two, three.
Our feet spin on the fragile glass floor
That is called "proper society" by the masses.
Our coattails or skirts fly out as we dance,
Whipping through the air like our hands do
When we write or scribble or type.
One, two, three; one, two, three; one, two, three.
The tempo changes, the dance is changed.
Still we dance the time away with our partner.
The lighting changes with our mood—
Broadest daylight to deepest night.
Each writer has a preferred time.
One, two, three; one, two, three; one, two, three.
Sometimes we glimpse another's partner,
Bump into them by "accident."
And then our own partner changes,
Taking on just a hint of the other's partner.
And we glide along the dance floor,
Our hearts beating out the rhythms of life,
Our heels clicking out our words,
Our partners forming the stories we write.